Gore urges US, China to join efforts to save planet

OSLO: Former US vice president Al Gore and the UN's top climate panel received the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize at a ceremony in Oslo on Monday for their work to help combat global warming.   

"We congratulate the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and Al Gore on receiving this year's Peace Prize," Ole Mjoes, who heads the five-member Nobel committee, said before handing over the award in a flower-decked Oslo city hall.   

"We thank you for what you have done for mother earth and wish you further success in a task that is so vital to us all. Action is needed now. Climate change is already moving beyond human control," he added.   

Former US vice president Al Gore urged the United States and China to stop blaming each other and join the fight against global warming as he accepted his Nobel Peace Prize here on Monday.
    
"Both countries should stop using the others behaviour as an excuse for stalemate and instead develop an agenda for mutual survival in a shared global environment" Gore said, according to an advance copy of his speech obtained by AFP.
    
Gore, 59, was jointly awarded the prestigious Peace prize with the UN's top climate panel.
    
The United States is the only rich nation not party to the Kyoto Protocol, while China has said it will not back binding emissions curbs that could affect its booming economy.
    
"The Earth has a fever. And the fever is rising," lamented the creator of the Oscar-winning documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" on the disastrous effects of climate change."We have begun waging war on the Earth itself," he cautioned.
    
He voiced optimism on the prospects of the ongoing Bali summit, gathering delegations from nearly 190 nations to hammer out the groundwork for a new global warming treaty beyond 2012 when the Kyoto Protocol's first phase expires.
    
Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - a United Nations body of about 3,000 experts -- were honoured on in a flower-decked Oslo city hall for their work to raise awareness about the effects of global warming.
    
The Nobel committee's decision to award the peace prize to climate campaigners continued the trend of broadening its scope beyond the traditional field of conflict preventing and resolution and disarmament.   

Over the years, winners have been honoured for humanitarian aid work and human rights. Kenyan ecologist Wangari Maathai won in 2002, and Bangladeshi microcredit pioneer Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank won last year.
    
"Chief threats may be direct violence ... deaths may also have less direct sources in starvation, disease or natural disasters. A goal in our modern world must be to maintain 'human security' in the broadest sense," the head of the five-member Nobel committee Ole Mjoes said.
    
IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri, who was to accept the prize on behalf of his organisation, also stressed the link between fighting climate change and peace.
    
Global warming could prompt "dramatic population migration, conflict and war over water and other resources as well as a realignment of power among nations," he cautioned.
    
Climate change will among other things likely cause acute water shortages in many areas, Pachauri said, according to an advance copy of his speech.
    
Within the next 12 years, he said as many as 250 million people in Africa could face "increased water stress due to climate change," while a 0.5-degree-Celsius average temperature hike over 1980-99 levels could push sea level up four metres due to Greenland's melting icecap.
    
Halting the process was still possible, he said. "The impacts of climate change can be limited by suitable adaptation measures and stringent mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions."